


Chasing Shadows

by LokiOfSassgaard



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 21:06:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6345136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokiOfSassgaard/pseuds/LokiOfSassgaard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock goes missing, and Mycroft goes mad trying to find him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing Shadows

Sherlock was 20 when he disappeared. Over the span of a week, he had been expelled from university, evicted from his flat, and completely dropped off the face of the planet. Mycroft didn’t find out about any of this until nearly a week later. He had been up to his ears in a massive cock-up involving the accidental bombing of a Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, with Mycroft’s department caught in the middle of a blame-throwing contest between NATO and the CIA.

By the time he was able to put all things Kosovo out of his mind, Sherlock had been missing for a month, and the trail long cold. That didn’t stop him from trying, though. He pulled every resource he could, paying visits at all hours of the day and night to question former flat and classmates. He had just given up on the university thread when one of the professors mentioned the name of a politics student. Mycroft at first thought that the professor must have been mistaken, confusing Sherlock for someone else, because even as a boy, Sherlock had never been in the habit of keeping friends. In two years of university, he couldn’t even keep flatmates, having gone through nine of them all told. But the professor insisted, so Mycroft decided to pay the girl a visit.

As it turned out, Carol had been a friend of Sherlock’s; a rather close friend, even, and was clearly stressed over his disappearance. After letting Mycroft into her flat, she disappeared to a small bedroom for a few moments. When she returned, she was carrying a heavy black hoodie, which she gave to Mycroft.

“It’s his,” she explained. “I thought it was odd when he left it here, because he wore it everywhere. Didn’t care what the weather was like.”

Mycroft took the hoodie, slowly turning the fabric over in his hands. There was nothing special or unique about it, which would have been exactly why Sherlock would have liked it. Such a dreadfully common article of clothing, Mycroft could n’t help noting.

“Did you see him at all after that?” he asked, his attention caught briefly by the inside of the hood itself.

Carol shook her head. “No. He’d been expelled earlier in the week, and had just been locked out of his flat. That’s why he came here. I let him kip on the sofa. But he scared my flatmates, and they wouldn’t believe me when I tried to explain that he’s not actually a mean person. He just gets bored really easily.”

“How long did he stay?” asked Mycroft.

“About a fortnight,” Carol said. “Vicks was the one who kicked him out. Otherwise, I’d have let him stay as long as he wanted.”

Mycroft swore to himself. If it weren’t for the incompetence of the entire North Atlantic, his search would have been long over.

“Have you heard anything from him since?” he asked, not able to hide the hopefulness from his voice.

Carol shook her head slowly. “No. Sorry,” she said.

Mycroft sighed. “Thank you,” he said as he turned toward the door, ready to see himself out.

“Hey,” Carol called after him, effectively stopping him in his tracks. “If you find him, let me know.”

If.

Mycroft tried not to dwell on that word; two letters that were almost completely devoid of hope. Instead, he gave her one of his well-practised smiles and nodded.

“Of course, dear,” he said, just before leaving the flat.

 

He went straight back to his office after that, still clutching tightly to the hoodie Sherlock’s one friend in the world had relinquished to him. Sitting at his desk, he pulled a roll of sellotape from one of the drawers. He carefully looped it into a band and used it to gather any loose fibres he could from the inside of the hood. When he was done, he called in his secretary, and ordered the fibres tested, top priority.

Four hours later, a report was delivered to his desk. Mycroft pushed aside the ae rial photos of Iran that he had been studying and tore into the report.

The DNA was a match, which gave Mycroft the odd sensation of his heart both leaping up and sinking to his stomach at the same time, giving him the emotional equivalent of vertigo.

Below that, there was a small block of text, with one word standing out amongst the rest. Cocaine.

Twenty minutes later, Mycroft had formally put in for a transfer.

 

“Mr Holmes?”

Mycroft sat up quickly at the voice of one of the interns at his door. Checking his watch, he realised that he must have fallen asleep about a half hour earlier.

“Is everything all right, sir?” the intern asked. “It’s just that everyone else is gone.”

Mycroft rubbed his eyes and shook his head lightly.

“Cameron, isn’t it?” he asked conversationally.

“That’s right.”

He smiled at the boy, who looked to be about Sherlock’s age. “Everything’s just fin e, Cameron.”

Hiding his emotions had become key lately, since he’d been abusing resources left and right for over three months. He feared that if anyone ever figured out what was going on, why he’d spend hours checking hospital and police records or staring at CCTV monitors when he should have been at home, asleep, he might find those resources beginning to close off. He was still making his way through the ranks, and knew that he’d need every resource he could get his hands on if he wanted to find his brother.

 

Little old ladies, he’d found, were the most reliable resource in the entire country. They saw everything, and couldn’t wait to talk about it. More often than not, the tips he got were vague sightings at best, but he found that the vague sightings gave him hope, and he followed up every single damn one of them. Once or twice, he knew he’d come close. Closer than he had with Sherlock’s friend from university, even. The leads would a lways take him to squats or shelters, or on one particularly grim occasion, a small camp in a damp alley in Marylebone.

For once, he realised, the completely ridiculous names their mother had settled on for them had proved themselves to be a blessing. People don’t just forget a name like Sherlock, no matter how high they had been at the time.

And with this came more hope. The thought did not escape Mycroft that if he’d been looking for a Jason or a Patrick or anyone else, conversations could have been about anyone. But he was willing to put his entire pension on the homeless population of London with the name Sherlock being exactly one.

Then, one day, the leads just stopped. No more sightings, no one remembering having met anyone called Sherlock; nothing. After a solid week of this terrifying nothing, Mycroft locked himself in a closet and screamed into the crook of his arm. Knowing that his brother was alive was one thing. Knowing that he was alive and not wanting to be found was a terrible falling sensation, and one Mycroft had no idea how to stop. Every day Sherlock remained off the radar was another day that Mycroft fell further into despair.

Mycroft composed himself, trying his best to dry his eyes and level his breathing before leaving the closet. He had no doubt that people had heard him, but he didn’t care. He ignored the looks and remarks garnered from everyone as he walked calmly to his office to go check police and hospital reports.

 

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew that everyone else was aware of what was happening. It wasn’t conscious knowledge, but he knew that it was there, somewhere, because when an aid knocked on his door with news of a hospital report bearing Sherlock’s name, he didn’t even think about how the aid would have known such a thing. He simply jumped out of his chair and ran out of his office, hastily snatching the report from the aid.

He had prepare d himself for the worst, almost convinced himself that this might be the last time he see his brother alive. These stories never ended well, and they always ended in hospital. When Mycroft rushed into the A&E at St Thomas’, he was surprised when a nurse offered to take him through to cubicles. They arrived to see Sherlock, sitting on the edge of a bed as he pulled a shirt over his head, clearly getting ready to flee.

His hair was cut short against his scalp; done recently and with scissors, going by the uneven quality of the job. No doubt as means to keep himself more invisible. He had a large gash on his forehead, and a few bruises, but the thing that really stood out to Mycroft was how positively skeletal Sherlock looked. He couldn’t have weighed more than eight stone, and his skin was a terrible shade of grey, which only made the dark track marks on his arms and matching dark circles under his eyes stand out even more. His hands trembled almost uncontrollably as he gathered what few belongings he had, shoving them all into a small bag.

Mycroft wanted to punch him in the face.

“Goddamnit, Sherlock,” he said.

Sherlock’s attention shot up at Mycroft’s voice, and for a second, it almost looked as though he was going to run.

“Mycroft, piss off. I don’t want you here.” He stayed on the bed, though, and Mycroft wondered if he even had the strength to run.

“What happened?” he asked, fairly certain that whatever it was, it wasn’t OD. Sherlock wouldn’t be in cubicles if it were OD.

“I got hit by a car,” Sherlock answered dully. “It’s nothing. In this traffic, no one’s able to drive quickly enough to actually do anything. I think I did more damage to the bonnet.”

“Jesus,” Mycroft said quietly. He made his way to Sherlock, standing at the end of the bed. “Have you any idea what you’ve put the family through?”

Sherlock started to get up, moving shakily. “I don’t care, Mycroft. Leave me alone.” He pushed past his older brother, ready to vanish all over again.

Mycroft didn’t reach out to stop him, instead crossing his arms over his chest. “Mummy had a heart attack after you disappeared,” he said, finally feeling safe enough to let some of the venom into his voice.

Sherlock stopped in his tracks, but he didn’t turn around or say anything.

“I know you care about that, Sherlock,” Mycroft said.

Neither said anything for several long moments.

“Is she all right?” Sherlock finally asked, his voice heavy with the fear that he might not like the answer.

Mycroft sighed. “She’ll be a lot better if she knew that you’re all right,” he said. Sherlock sagged slightly, and Mycroft knew that he’d found his way in.

“You can tell her,” Sherlock said.

“Nine months.” Mycroft glared at his younger brother. “You’ve been gone nine months, and you’ve given M ummy a heart attack and me a weight problem from all the fucking stress of trying to figure out if you were even still alive. You’re not leaving again.”

Sherlock turned toward Mycroft with an odd grin spread across his face. “Watch me,” he said.

Mycroft did watch him, and pulled out his mobile from his jacket. Ignoring the nurse’s orders to turn it off, he made a call.

“Don’t let him leave,” he said quietly.

He turned off his phone and smiled at the nurse. “Sorry, dear. What was that?” he asked, all smiles and warm voices. “I’ll just be on my way now. Thank you.”

He slowly made his way back through A&E to the car park, where the car had been waiting for him. In the back seat was Sherlock, who was staring daggers at the man who had bustled him into the car with enough force to bloody his nose.

Sitting down, Mycroft pulled a handkerchief from his jacket and handed it to Sherlock. Neither of them said anything during the drive, which took them out to Croydon. It wasn’t until the car pulled up to an unfamiliar building that the silence was broken.

“Where are we?” Sherlock asked.

“I think you already know the answer to that,” Mycroft answered calmly.

Sherlock shoved against him, all sharp angles, and pressed his face against the window. “No,” he said simply.

“Yes.” Mycroft opened the door. “Because if you don’t, you’re just as stupid as the rest of them.”

He knew that it stung, and that Sherlock’s desire to be better than everyone around him would lead to him trying to prove that he was. In this case, it would take the form of getting him through the front doors of the clinic.

“I’m not stupid,” Sherlock spat as he climbed over Mycroft to get out of the car, his knees pressing against the older man’s stomach.

Mycroft coughed lightly. “You could have fooled me,” he said as he followed Sherlock out of the car. He took Sherlock by the arm and led him to the front doors. “Prove me wrong.”

Sherlock jerked away from him. “Don’t visit me,” he said. “I don’t care if you’re footing the bills. I don’t want to see your face.”

Mycroft nodded at the man who had put Sherlock in the car, and watched as he escorted his brother into the clinic. Right then, he didn’t care if Sherlock didn’t want to see him ever again. He didn’t care if Sherlock hated him for the rest of their lives. Knowing that he was alive and getting help was enough.

He crossed his arms over the roof of the car and put his head down, making a conscious effort to make sure that he was breathing steadily and not about to start choking from the constriction of his throat. Once he was as composed as he’d ever manage to be, he reached for his phone again to make a call and keep a promise he’d once made.


End file.
